“Postal truckers are losing their jobs to a profiteering,
private corporation,” declared Jamie Partridge, a retired postal worker with
Portland Communities and Postal Workers United.
“We protest the privatization of the public postal service. We oppose the destruction of family wage,
union jobs and the delay of the people’s mail.”

Portland postal truckers are being put on standby while the
private, non-postal, non-union Dill's Star/ LAPO trucking company takes their
work. Dill's is headquartered in Vancouver, Washington.

“This privatization and union-busting is being carried out in the
name of a phony financial emergency,” said Rev. John Schwiebert, one of
the protesters planning the action. “The
security, safety, and timely delivery of the mail are all at risk. Rural communities, seniors and the disabled,
small businesses and low-income communities are hit the hardest. Postal management needs to stop and reverse
these closures, cuts, and subcontracts which are sending our beloved postal
service into a death spiral.”

PCPWU is demanding that postal management reveal why a
padded, no-bid contract was signed with a bankrupt company, which did not have
the proper equipment, which had been rejected in the past for “poor performance
and equipment deficiencies”, which was recently convicted of major labor law
violations, and which is costing the USPS more to move the mail than if the
postal service were to use postal employees.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Join the "postal protectors" in sending a message to postal management that the Postal Service should remain a vital public service owned by the people rather than by profit-hungry private corporations. Bring a dollar to buy stamps. We'll supply the postcards, chants, songs, signs, banners and snacks.

Join
the "postal protectors" in sending a message to postal management that
the Post Service should remain a vital public service owned by the
people rather than by profit-hungry private corporations. Bring a
dollar to buy stamps. We'll supply the postcards, chants, songs, signs,
banners and snacks.

Movement Towards Privatizing Post Office Continues

By Melissa Landon, www.irjci.blogspot.comBecause the U.S. Postal Service will change its staffing policies in September, as many as 3,300 postmasters could lose their full-time jobs. The policy involves shortening post-office hours and providing more part-time positions and fewer full-time ones. “By October, the institution of the small-town career postmaster will become a thing of the past at almost half the country’s post offices,” says SavethePostOffice.com. (Hat tip to the Daily Yonder)

Around 8,800 post offices have already cut some hours during the past year and one half, 300 have scheduled public meetings and 3,900 have not scheduled a meeting or implemented any such changes. “If implementation continues at the current rate (about a hundred a month), some 600 of these post offices will have their hours reduced during the spring and summer,” SavethePostOffice says. To see an interactive map showing post offices planning to reduce services, click here.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

ON APRIL 24, a national day of action–STOP STAPLES–will target the nation’s largest office supply chain.

Staples has contracted with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to staff
post offices installed within their stores. In pilot openings last fall,
82 post offices were launched inside Staples stores with low-paid, nonunion, non-postal workers
(the average Staples worker makes $18,000 per year. If the pilots are
“successful,” the USPS plans to open post offices inside every one of
the 1,600 Staples stores nationwide, beginning this September.

The postal service claims it is expanding service to postal customers
by providing retail outlets in Staples stores, which are open evenings
and on Sundays. The APWU, which represents postal retail workers, would
accept the Staples deal if union-represented, highly trained,
accountable and uniformed postal workers staffed the offices.